In an interview in La Gloire de Pagnol, Jacqueline Pagnol -- Marcel Pagnol's widow -- speaks with Alain Ferrarri of Pagnol's problems with film critics. They discuss La Critique des critiiques published in 1947 (coincidentally at a time when the young turks were still teenagers) a book in which Pagnol launches a broadside against the film critics of that time and they also discuss the generally negative reaction of critics to Manon des sources in 1953. Ferrari, in a footnote, mentions as an example of a positive review André Bazin's review which Ferrari says is for the most part "elogious". In that review which was republished in What is Cinema? , Bazin said that Pagnol had done, in cinema, for words what D W Griffith had done for images (Why, Benny, do I get the idea that you will somehow interpret that as an insult?). Jacqueline Pagnol went on to say,

"Recognition of Marcel by film critics came later with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard when they were writing for Cahiers du Cinema. Marcel was very touched by the fact that these young people spontaneously spoke of their admiration. He received several of them at our home."